And it was after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, that the Lord said to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying, “Moses my servant has died and now arise and cross the River Jordan. You and all this nation go to the land which I give the Children of Israel. Every place on which the soles of your feet will tread I have given to you, as I have spoken to Moses. No man shall stand up …

“Not so,” say diplomats in the United States and the rest of the Western world.

These leaders have their own, alternate supreme authority, which delineates not just the borders of Israel, but also that of every other nation within the Middle East. They consider their authority to be an entity far more powerful than the Lord – the European colonial powers, especially the United Kingdom and France.

Just look at today’s map in the Middle East, and you can see what I mean.

Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, etc. all still exist within the borders that the European colonial powers drew for them. These borders had nothing to do with their history. They had nothing to do with their ethnic homogeneity. They had nothing to do with their religious homogeneity. They had nothing to do with their linguistics. And today, the mix of peoples within each state is sometimes even more divided than when the borders were first drawn, as the different peoples within them often have different natural growth rates, or emigration rates, which have altered the balance of power in a major way. Simply put, these borders no longer make sense, if they ever did.

But don’t you ever think about touching those borders. That is not to be allowed.

When the United States ousted the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, and occupied that country, our officials were careful to maintain a unified state out of the hodgepodge of nationalities and religions created by the British-French pen. The Iraqi population is roughly 30 plus million divide as follows as follows – about 18 million Shia Arabs, 5 million Sunni Arabs, 5 million Sunni Kurds, who are a different ethnic group than Arabs, with the remainder largely Christian Arabs (those who haven’t fled yet). Generally, the three main peoples live in different areas of the nation, with the Kurds in the North, the Sunni Arabs in the West, and the Shia Arabs predominating elsewhere. Historically these three groups have been in opposition to one another. But, even during the height of the Iraqi post-war insurrection, when Shia Arabs and Sunni Arabs and Kurds were all at each other’s throats, almost no American of any significance considered the logical option of dividing the country into three sections. Perhaps the world felt that since Europe colonialists had already spoken on the matter, the Iraqis would just have to learn to live together.

Also, consider Syria and Lebanon. France originally drew their boundaries. Both were drawn to maximize French interests, especially in Lebanon, where the French were interested in producing a majority Christian nation. Today, the conflicts originating out of these lines have led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people.

In Syria, there are 23 million inhabitants. 16 million are Sunni Arabs. Over 3 million are non-Sunni Arabs, mostly Alawites, but also including some Druze. Both the Alawites and the Druze live primarily in the Western, more mountainous areas. There are about 2 million Kurds residing in the northeastern corner. And there were more than 2 million Christian Arabs, prior to the rebellion. Currently, much of the country is in flames, as Sunni Arabs – led by jihadists – seek to violently overthrow the Iranian-backed Alawite dictator Assad. Over 70,000 people have died during this civil war. Yet, among all the various peace plans that have been proposed by the international elites, precious few advocate the seemingly obvious idea of splitting Syria into its different constituent parts, so as to better protect minorities. (The Christians may not be concentrated enough to create a separate state, although it is possible that they might be more safe in an Alawite or Kurdish state.)

In Lebanon, there are around 1.2 million Sunni Arabs, more than 1.2 million Shia Arabs, 1.4 million Christians (whom are further subdivided) and 200,000 Druze. Because Lebanon is so heterogynous, it has had over twenty-five years of civil war, with hundreds of thousands of casualties, and currently is under a fragile “truce” thanks to the ability of the Shia terrorist group Hezbollah to forcibly control the nation. The Lebanese communities are, once again, mostly segregated. But, once again, no major international peace plans for Lebanon have ever made the case for a sensible division of the country.

So, now we come back to Israel.

After God had had his way, the British stepped in. In 1921, the British chopped off 80% of the land to give to their ally, the Hashemite Abdullah, whose family had just lost their prior kingdom in what is now Saudi Arabia. The monarchy of Jordan – as it became – has been in existence ever since. Of course, as befits a kingdom arbitrarily drawn up by the British, a majority of the population of Jordan is actually made up of Palestinian Arab emigrants.

After the British tired of keeping peace between the warring Arabs and Jews in the remaining 20% of Palestine, the United Nations – led by the European diplomats – tried to organize that rump into competing areas of Arab and Jewish control. This led to war, which resulted in the 1948 armistice lines. Since then, Israel has been forced to fight numerous times against the Arab world. In each of these struggles, the lines have changed.

But the world – led by the diplomats of Europe – still doesn’t recognize the current borders of Israel. Neither does the Obama Administration.

Then again, perhaps this isn’t too surprising. The British never got their final say on Israel’s borders, did they?